'Taxi to the Dark Side'

Documentary. Written, directed and narrated by Alex Gibney. (R. 106 minutes. At the Lumiere and Shattuck.)

Among the dark films nominated for Oscars this year is Alex Gibney's rage-inducing expose of how the Bush administration came to condone torture in the name of national security. Thoroughly documented and with remarkably candid interviews with the perpetrators of and bureaucrats behind the violence, the documentary raises the question buried beneath the march of wartime headlines: How will the United States be affected by its disastrous abrogation of human rights and rule of law, now and for decades to come?

Gibney, who previously directed "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" and who served as executive producer of the Iraq war documentary "No End in Sight" (also nominated for an Oscar), excels at morally outraged muckraking. His film is built around the case of Diliwar, a taxi driver who was detained in Afghanistan in 2002 and who died in American custody at the Bagram prison a few months later.

Relying on reporting previously conducted by Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden of the New York Times - and through his interviews with military intelligence at Bagram - Gibney retraces how Diliwar suffered brutal physical treatment that was part of a de facto Army policy of torture: He was deprived of sleep for days, suspended from the ceiling by his wrists and beaten to the point where his legs were "pulpified," according to the Army coroner. The death of the taxi driver, who had no known connection to al Qaeda or the Taliban and was never charged with a crime, was even documented by the U.S. prison coroner as homicide.

Diliwar is the means by which Gibney traces a line of accountability from the abuses that took place at Bagram to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. As those who followed the controversy surrounding the Abu Ghraib photos will remember, the principals of the Bush administration claimed that a few "bad apples" were responsible for the horrific acts that happened there. But Gibney argues, in overwhelming detail, that the waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, shackling, hooding and other Spanish Inquisition-era practices that Alberto Gonzales rationalized as "coercive interrogation techniques" were sanctioned by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and probably George Bush himself.

If it weren't bad enough to be reminded that this crew of government officials found the Geneva Conventions "quaint" and "vague," Gibney presents rounds of interviews with conservative Republicans and intelligence officers who conclude that not only did the United States commit war crimes in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, it did so without gleaning much intelligence. The film notes that of the hundreds of prisoners detained since September 2006 by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, only 1 percent have been convicted. Meanwhile, of the more than 100 deaths in U.S. custody, 37 have been officially declared homicides by the U.S. military.

"Taxi to the Dark Side" will go down in film history as a damning historical document of the Bush administration's wartime expansion of executive powers. The film is not easy to watch (it includes never-before-seen photos and videos from the prisons) but it should be seen by anyone who considers himself a hell-bent critic or a trusting patriot or who is just confused about what went down at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If Gibney wins an Oscar, it will be because academy members also want Americans to be rattled by the country's lost moral stature.

The film is also a personal project for Gibney, dedicated to his late father, who was a Naval interrogator during World War II and who was outraged by the revelations of torture at U.S. prisons. The last interview of the documentary is with Frank Gibney, who laments that torture is like a virulent virus, haunting the psyche of those who administer it, corrupting the officials who look the other way and discrediting the information obtained.

Says the elder Gibney of his World War II interrogation work, "There was a rule of law. You never forgot that ... It was something we believed. It made America different."

'Quantum Hoops'

Whenever discussing national collegiate basketball powerhouses, one naturally mentions UCLA, Indiana, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Caltech ... Oops, scratch the last one from that list. Or at least scratch the word basketball.

Caltech is a powerhouse in academics, boasting among its faculty and alumni such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, Charles Richter and Stephen Hawking. But when it comes to sports, the Beavers are mostly remembered for their off-field antics, such as the time they hacked into the Rose Bowl scoreboard, rather than their athletic prowess. And nowhere is Caltech not a success in the win column more than in men's basketball. "Quantum Hoops," directed and written by Rick Greenwald, follows the 2006 team as it endeavors to end the school's 21-year losing streak.

A fascinating look into student life of the past and present, "Quantum Hoops" uses archive footage and incisive present-day interviews while delving into whether sports is important for a well-rounded education. The revelations and clever use of each era in Caltech's history gives the film the charm needed to convince viewers that losing is a subject worth exploring.

Sports weren't always so inconsequential at Caltech. The football team even claimed a victory against UCLA, one of today's athletic behemoths. During World War II, so many Navy men attended the school that athletics thrived. Yet, just like the Amazing Mets of 1962, Caltech's ineptitude somehow dissolves the cynicism and makes us believe in the underdog.

There are some milestones Caltech fans are proud of, including Fred Newman of the class of 1959 who went on to become the world-record holder in free-throw shooting (more than 200 believe it or not). And then there was the end to Caltech's 99-game losing streak when the team beat 1979 Pomona-Pitzer College. The coach of PPC at the time was Gregg Popovich, who would go on to coach a bunch of NBA championships with the San Antonio Spurs. Kudos to Popovich, who gracefully exudes a good sense of humor in discussing his team's dubious role in the movie.

The current streak has a good chance of ending with the 2006 team. After all, six of the players played varsity in high school, and bit by bit the team has improved on their margin of loss: Two years earlier, Caltech lost each game by an average of 60 points.

The final game of the season against Whittier is the last opportunity for the seniors to get one in the victory column. What one sees is hope and perseverance as Caltech plays its best game of the year under adverse conditions. We won't tell you the final score, but no matter the actual outcome, these "losers" are true winners - on and off the court.

-- Advisory: To fully enjoy the movie, don't Google the team results, and make sure you sit through the credits.

'Shrooms'

For maybe 10 minutes, the novelty of watching an Irish slasher film - one in which the victims are college kids tripping on psychedelics - may hold your attention. But as it meanders on, Paddy Breathnach's "Shrooms" turns into a pedestrian slice 'n' dice feature highlighted by some visual effects designed to mime the experience of ingesting magic mushrooms.

The story involves the usual obnoxious group of young cliches - a jock, a wholesome cheerleader type, a wannabe martial artist, etc. - who, despite the setting in the misty Irish countryside, are Americans. They've traveled to the Emerald Isle to visit Jake (Jack Huston, son of actor-writer Tony Huston and grandson of John Huston), who's told them that Ireland has the world's finest magic mushrooms.

The Americans are led by Tara (Lindsey Haun), who met Jake on an earlier vacation and has a crush on him.

Naturally, the woodsy area chosen for the group's druggy foray is one with a scary history, recounted by Jake over a campfire. It seems that nearby was the site of a boys detention center notorious for abysmal treatment of its residents, a place that spawned tales of torture and killings, allegedly at the hands of one Black Brother, a hooded figure who may still haunt the countryside.

Also upping the scare ante are a pair of drooling morons who have retreated from civilization in a big way.

Before the kids start tripping - and dying - Jake offers one piece of advice: Don't eat the Death's Head mushrooms. Infatuated Tara almost immediately ignores this wisdom, with very unpleasant consequences.

Strange events start happening. Objects begin to quiver and throb. The kids think they see things in the woods and begin bickering.

Is this actually happening? Or is it all hallucinations?

And who really cares?

In fairness, director Breathnach and writer Pearse Elliott offer a couple of touches - including an inspired bit of silliness involving a talking animal - that suggest they have some perspective on this well-worn material. And Breathnach isn't simply a hack: In 1997 he made a pretty good indie picture called "I Went Down," an Irish gangster comedy with Brendan Gleeson in the cast. But that's a world away from this half-baked effort.